Entertainment

B’way yanks in Hanks

Let’s forgo the usual rumor-mongering and print something that’s the God’s honest truth: Tom Hanks will be making his Broadway debut next season in a new play by Nora Ephron.

(Scramble to match this one today, Mr. Pat Healy of the New York Times!)

Hanks has signed on to play tabloid newspaper columnist Mike McAlary in “Lucky Guy,” which will open in January for a limited run at a Shubert theater.

I’ve been keeping tabs on this one for a while, since I knew (slightly) McAlary toward the end of his life. He was the last of the great NYC newspaper columnists, a storied bunch that included Damon Runyon, Murray Kempton, Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill.

A tough guy who drank with cops, McAlary covered the major crime stories of the ’80s and ’90s, most famously the sodomizing of Abner Louima by the police. McAlary won the Pulitzer Prize for his aggressive coverage of the case in 1998, just a few months before he died of colon cancer at 41.

McAlary didn’t always get it right. Some of his editors suspected he “piped,” or made up, quotes for dramatic effect. And he screwed up spectacularly in 1994 when, in the Daily News, he accused a woman of making up a rape charge to promote a feminist rally.

The woman, a lesbian, claimed to have been raped in Park Slope. McAlary wrote that the police doubted her story. His column ran under the incendiary headline “Rape hoax the real crime.”

The next day Police Commissioner William Bratton held a press conference to announce that, in fact, there was evidence of rape. He also apologized to the victim.

The woman hit McAlary and the News with a $12 million libel suit.

Ephron’s play deals with both the Louima case and the libel suit — the high and low points of his career.

Although she never met McAlary, she was inspired to write about him after reading his obituaries. She spent several years interviewing editors and reporters who did know him, including ex-News editor Jim Willse, and Hap Hairston, who edited McAlary’s Louima columns.

“Lucky Guy,” a draft of which I’ve read, captures the end of the era of newspaper dominance, when a tabloid columnist like McAlary, who also worked at The Post, sold papers, drove stories and had the pulse of the city.

It’s a subject near and dear to Ephron’s heart. She’s a tabloid baby herself, having worked at The Post in the 1960s.

Hugh Jackman did a reading of the play last year when it was called “Stories About McAlary.” The script was loosely structured back then, but Ephron has tightened it up.

Hanks has been looking to do a play in New York for several years. He’s been offered many scripts but reportedly chose this one because of its compelling lead character and his own friendship with Ephron, who wrote “Sleepless in Seattle,” one of Hanks’ most popular movies.

George C. Wolfe will direct “Lucky Guy.” He’s helped Ephron shape her final, tighter draft.

Put me down for the opening night. The theater’s going to be packed with great old hacks who remember what it was like when newspapers ran the town.

RAUL Esparza in “Leap of Faith” — poor old Raúl’s name is larger on the marquee than the title — is closing Sunday despite its Tony nomination for Best Musical. The show’s been losing hundreds of thousands a week since previews began last month. The producers tried to raise an additional $2 million to keep running through the Tonys, but in the end weren’t able to raise enough to fill a single collection plate at the Times Square Church.

Yesterday, they were “undecided” about performing a number from the show on the Tony Award telecast. I think they’ll decide pretty quickly once they realize that doing so will cost them at least another $50,000.

(Shows pay for their appearances on the Tonys.)

This could open the way for a snubbed but popular show like “Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark” to pop up on the telecast.

The Tonys need entertainment, nominated or not.